NCAA Violations: Recruiting and Player Management System Broken

Alabama, Arkansas State, UCF, FIU, FSU, Michigan, New Mexico, Texas Tech, USC, Ohio State and now Miami are all on probation after violating NCAA rules. Florida has the most schools currently on probation.

Miami is still in the beginning stages of investigation regarding the Nevin Shapiro scandal and may face "the death penalty" that in the past kept SMU from participating in the 1987 and '88 seasons. Now, UCF is being investigated for their alleged recruiting ties to outside intermediaries with connections to elite players.

Ken Caldwell, a Chicagoan, whose son attended UCF, allegedly set up meetings between UCF coaches and DaMarcus Smith, Kevin Ware, and Michael Chandler. All three recruits are not attending UCF and have academic eligibility issues.

The recruits undoubtedly had contact with Caldwell, but whether their connection with UCF was setup or just standard recruitment is the question. UCF has had a string of successful recruiting in both basketball and football, but there's a list of reasons to justify it. There is nothing to suggest, at this point, that Mr. Caldwell has done anything wrong.

The issue today is the manner in which recruits are handled and the trafficking scouts who "guide" recruits in the direction of certain high profile teams or teams with special relationships.

It's a disgrace that high school students are treated as property for profit and the current system isn't working. The NCAA conducts investigations and imposes probationary periods where certain requirements must be fulfilled. However, there are no enforcers that keep these "scouts" out of contact with players, and in order to compete at the Division I level, some teams feel it is necessary to remain friendly with these scouts to add a competitive edge.

It is now up to the schools and their compliance departments to ensure coaches are not in contact with these player agents and that sports at the collegiate level remain amateur. Legal action should be taken against these "agents" to prevent them from contact with high school students and their families.

Individual promotion of players must cease and schools must set up infrastructure to handle the development of recruits through the recruiting process with weekly reporting to the NCAA. On national signing day, no recruit should be stringing several schools along if their recruitment is well established with checks and balances.

College sports are sports at their purest level, without the addition of professional ego, pay for play, and salaries for the injured. In a world littered with professional sports, it should be the desire of those at the collegiate level to keep this level pure. Hopefully, some of the fallout from the most recent inquiries will prompt a change and we can move past the subject of violations in every article we read (including this one)!